Profile
Lucas began his career working as a carpenter for his father’s construction company in southern Indiana between semesters in high school and college. He went on to earn dual bachelors degrees in architecture and environmental design and his master's degree in architecture with a focus on sustainability at Ball State University. Lucas has a varied background in sustainability research, professional practice, design-build and furniture design, approaching projects with a spirit of inventiveness and a sensibility for integrating built environments with natural processes and surroundings.

He is the proprietor of Lucas Brown Design + Fabrication, and has collaborated with and worked for several organizations including LZT Architects, Inc., Macek Furniture, CMPBS (The Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems) and Michael Chamblee Architect. His projects include new construction and renovations for private residences, school renovations, performing art centers, religious sanctuaries, and senior housing. He's also designed and fabricated furniture, outdoor living spaces and shade structures.

His interest is developing projects that make sensible use of local and recycled building materials and applying techniques like active and passive solar design and integrated resource use working toward the development of regenerative systems. Lucas is on the board of advisors for the Austin Community Design and Development Center, an associate member of The American Institute of Architects, and is CDT (Construction Document Technician) certified by the Construction Specifications Institute. Lucas’ work has been published in a number of architectural publications including Dwell, Metropolis and Texas Architect. He collaborated with Legge Lewis Legge on Cup City, an interactive art installation at the 2006 Austin City Limits Concert, which recently won a national AIA design award. While working at LZT Architects, Inc. he collaborated on Cedar Chapel, an outdoor chapel for a boyscout camp, which won a prestigious American Architecture Award.

At Green Mountain College, he helped create the Renewable Energy and Ecological Design program. With a strong bent toward hands-on education, he has worked with students on a number of projects at the College and in the community. He recently completed the Solar High Tunnel project on Cerridwen farm, which utilizes modern season extensions structures in combination with a solar thermal root zone heating system. In Ecological Design, students applied their cooperative food market research to the renovation of an dilapidated historic downtown storefront into the Stone Valley Community Market. In Environmental Design/Build, students collaboratively designed and built a solar tiny house, utilizing passive solar strategies, including a photovoltaic awning as a shade device. He is currently working with a design-build class in creating an urban farming shed, designed to meet the needs of farmers using vacant urban lots.